to identify, connect with, and build loyalty amongst retail inves- tors; and offers some best practices for communicating with your retail investor base.


Who is the Retail Investor? After the meme stock craze of the early pandemic, retail invest- ing got a bad rap. Retail investors were portrayed by the media as speculative, volatile, uneducated, and unsophisticated. Tey caused stocks to whiplash in price, making dramatic swings in a matter of minutes, only to leave management teams aghast at what to do next. But how has the retail subset of investors been viewed over time? Matt Siler, Vice President of Investor Relations at Vital Farms, sums up the retail investor evolution: “Traditionally you would think the retail investor is the unsophisticated mom and pop; your parents in the Baby Boomer generation. You could also think more recently of unsophisticated investors dabbling in meme stocks. But I do think that there are many people that fall in the middle of these extremes who want to understand their investments. I think younger generations, including Millennials and Gen Z, want to run their own money and pick their own stocks. So, I would bucket it three ways, and there are definitely generational gaps.” Max Goldstein, Head of Marketing and Shareholder Experi-


ence at Stakeholder Labs, which builds enterprise software to help companies measure and increase retail engagement, further honed in on this generational gap. He referenced a recent Oliver Wyman report, What Business


Needs to Know About Te Generation Changing Everything. “Gen Z investors,” he commented, “are 45% more likely to start investing by age 21 compared to millennials. Tey’re online, they’re getting information, they’re buying stock, and they’re doing it in record numbers. So, it’s less about your opinion of retail investors and more about how you are preparing for this tsunami of investors who are rapidly joining the economic system.” Retail investors are not just younger than ever before; they are


also much more diverse. Tat same Oliver Wyman report found that two decades ago, 36% of white households reported owning stock, compared with less than 10% of Black and Hispanic households. Fast forward to today, when the investing cohort of Gen Z investors in the United States has 60% more Black and Asian representation than prior cohorts. In terms of gender, the Fidelity Investments 2021 Women


“Traditionally you would think the retail investor is the unsophisticated mom and pop; your parents in the Baby Boomer generation. You could also think more recently of unsophisticated investors dabbling in meme stocks. But I do think that there are many people that fall in the middle of these extremes who want to understand their investments.” Matt Siler, Vice President


of Investor Relations, Vital Farms


and Investing Study shows the unprecedented growth in women opening retail accounts, with more women than ever in history “taking a seat at the investing table.” In the summer of 2021, there was a 43% increase in females opening brokerage accounts, with millennials driving this upward trend. Te need to prepare for this surge in Gen Z investors and how best to communicate with the younger generation is of utmost im- portance to investor relations going forward, but before adequately targeting and communicating with this new investor set, we still need to grasp the definition of a retail investor. Matthew Tractenberg, IRC, Vice President of Investor Relations


at Wallbox Chargers, takes the debate on defining the retail investor several steps further. He agrees that our society “doesn’t do a great job defining what a retail investor is. It’s like saying, ‘Hey do you want more retail investors?’ My response is, ‘Well, that depends.’ I think we are using a very broad term.” Tractenberg adds that what we need to do is differentiate


between retail trading when someone is in and out of a stock several times a day and a retail investor who is investing money in companies that they have a fundamental belief in and that they want the value to increase. Tis latter group of investors might say, “I don’t want volatility. I don’t want the stock to go down. I’m not shorting the stock. I’m not hedging against another position. I’m buying Starbucks, Tesla, or Microsoft because I believe in the value they are creating.” “Tat’s the type of the investor I want,” Tractenberg says, “and, by the way, that’s the same thing I want on the institutional side.”


2 0 SPRING 2 0 2 3 ■ IR UPDAT E niri.org/ irupdate


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48